I am not certain when in the sequence of these events I came to call upon Camille at her studio off of Houston Street, but I am sure it was not long after the Jew’s grim tidings were delivered to me.
I have always believed that bad news is best dealt with in the company of a lady. I would not be surprised to find that no respectable man in this city was able to place Camille Germain into this category, but I have always viewed Camille’s free spiritedness with an open-mindedness that many would agree is not quite in line with my own character. Our relationship was therefore kept mostly between us, which was something that sat better with myself than with Camille, to say the least.
She came to the door and was, as I often found her, dressed in her loose-fitting painting-smock, chewing the dog-end of a lit cigarette. She appeared to be quite tired, her mood unpromising for a man seeking the solace of a gentle feminine presence. She was, however, and as always, shockingly beautiful and I thought to myself that if solace is to be got without my needing to unload my burdens upon her, well, the better for the both of us.
I held out my flowers, and upon seeing them, a smile broke through her gloomy demeanor.
“Irises!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Charlie, you always know how to cheer a girl up.”
“It is the one thing I can do with any competence,” I said, stepping inside. “Besides squander a fortune.”
“Oh, but your squandering brings such happiness to so many people!”
She took my flowers and led me into the parlor, which looked as though a great wind had blown through it and scattered its contents all about. There was something perpetually unsettled about Camille’s life, as if she couldn’t be bothered with putting things in order.
When she turned to me again, I noticed that there was little evidence of any undergarment beneath her painting-smock, which both disturbed and aroused me. I struggled to keep my eyes from moving towards her – how shall I say? - somewhat liberated bosom - but the few times they strayed in that direction, she took little notice of them, as if she were used to being regarded in such a way. I knew of course, that this was not the reason for her disregard of my indiscretion, but rather it was a wholehearted (and alas unfounded) trust of my intentions; to put it bluntly, Camille Germain was completely unaware that I was hopelessly and utterly smitten with her.
She poured us both a drink from a decanter that she kept on her mantle. I took the glass hesitantly and glanced at the clock - it was at early enough in the day for taking breakfast, if I recall, and I am sure this realization prompted a look of disapproval on my face.
“Oh, you are such a bore these days, Charlie,” she said, then proceeded to snatch the drink from my hand and throw it with no small amount of force across the length of the apartment, where it went crashing into the far wall of her studio. As the resulting explosion concluded, she looked at the wall, then at me. Throwing her head back and laughing loudly she said: “I’d pay anything in the world to see Charles Blackthorne do that in his apartment.”
“Would you have anything in this world to pay with, is the question?”
“Why yes, Charlie. Yes, I do, in fact. There are other ways to pay for things besides one’s cheque book.”
She smiled, threw down her cigarette-butt, and stamped it out underfoot.
“You know, Camille,” I said, taking on my fatherly tone, “those solvents of yours are highly inflammable. You could set this place up quite easily.”
“I could, Charlie.” She seemed to drift off just then. ”I could.”
She picked up a paint brush and a paint-dabbed palette and walked over to a half-finished piece that she had on an easel. She looked at it thoughtfully, assumed the iconic pose of the artist in contemplation. It was moments like these when I realized how young she was, and how naïve.
I moved to stand behind her and looked at the painting, whose subject, I must say, was completely indecipherable. For that matter, so were most of the works that littered her apartment in various states of completeness. “You know, Camille,” I said, “ this new technique of yours - it’s quite baffling.”
“Oh, yes?”
“I mean, I don’t see the point in painting a vase if in the end it only remotely resembles one.”
“It’s quite telling that Charlie Blackthorn would think that one need paint objects in solely to affect their likeness. It seems to me an exercise in redundancy. Can I make you some tea instead? You English people still drink tea, don’t you?”
“A tea would be nice, dear. So long as you promise not to toss it across the room.”
“Now, Charlie, you know I can’t promise anything of the sort.”
“Of course you couldn’t – you have sworn an oath of unpredictability.”
“And you, Charlie, have sworn just the opposite.”
I smiled, always in awe of sharp repartee coming from one so young.
She went to the stove to put up the tea and I took my usual place upon her sofa.
“This art subject,” I said, “I am at quite a loss as to where it’s all heading. I always considered myself to be a man of the times, Camille, but this impressionism, this pointillism – all these Continentals with their fancy isms fly in the face of two thousand years of classical artistic tradition.”
“In case you forget, Charlie, I am one of those Continentals you speak of.”
“Are you? But you are from Philadelphia.”
“But my father was Parisian. And you, my dear friend, are hardly a man of the times – you are a bore of a Victorian, and a curmudgeonly one at that. I wonder sometimes what you are doing here in America, the most forward looking country on earth.”
“I wonder myself on occasion.” I brushed some lint from my lapel. “I suppose I am something of an anachronism. Guilty as charged. Pardon me for wanting to actually know the subject of a painting I am buying.”
“But you are right about these Continentals, Charlie. The whole point is to break the chains of the old masters, to free oneself from the baggage of history, to create art from the souls of the living rather than the ghosts of the dead.”
“Well, if that is my choice, Camille, then I choose the dead.”
“Then I feel sad for you, Charlie.”
By this time the kettle had come to a boil and she poured us both out some tea. I held out my cup. “Whatever happened to that boarder of yours – what did she call herself? Arianna, or some such thing? The one who wrote those dreadful poems?
“Valerianna. She’s gone.”
“Gone. Well, that is too bad.”
“It isn’t really. Valerianna was a pompous ass.”
“And how will you pay the rent now?”
“I haven’t been. I am more than a month late. In two weeks the marshal will be called out and I will be evicted.”
“My goodness, Camille - things do sound rather dire.”
“Do they? Well, I suppose they are. I’ll survive, though.”
“I don’t doubt that you will. I only wish I possessed a similar mettle.”
“Believe me, Charlie, it’s not the sort of ‘mettle’ one chooses to possess – it chooses you.”
She blew on her tea, took a sip of it, and made a face. “Dishwater,” she uttered. “I don’t know how your people do it.”
“For one, we make it properly. It is a rare thing in this country to have it made the way it should be.”
“If I remember my history, Charlie, not too long ago we dumping this stuff in the Boston Harbor – perhaps you expect too much from us.”
“Perhaps. But there is a way to do it right.”
“One day you’ll show me, Charlie.”
“Yes, one day.” I sipped the aptly named substance and with my finger removed a stray tealeaf from under my tongue. “The want of a proper cup of tea is the least of my problems these days, my dear.”
“What’s the matter, Charlie – did the tailor mis-measure your shirt again?”
“No – quite worse, quite worse. I apparently mis-measured the extent of my fortune. I am learning that it is, alas, a well with an apparent bottom, and with only so much water in it.”
“Is that your way of saying you’re going broke Charlie?”
“If you must put it so bluntly, dear, yes, I am going broke.”
This was one of those rare moments when a gentleman longs for some succor from his compatriot – a hand on the shoulder, perhaps – some acknowledgment of sympathy, empathy, even pity. The ensuing silence provided by Camille however, sated none of these natural longings. She seemed instead to retreat into herself, to repulse our intimacy. I have to remark, that instead of pity, I sensed in her disappointment in me.
Putting down her cup, she removed herself from the divan and picked up her paint palette and brush once again.
“It’s a rough road to weather, going broke, Charlie. I do hope you’re ready for it.”
“It is not a road I consciously chose, Camille, nor one that I feel particularly prepared for. Quite the contrary, I have become so accustomed to an abundant existence that the very thought of having to abode by a budget fills me with a sort of dread that you can hardly even begin to imagine.”
“The dread of poverty, is that what you mean? No, Charlie, I could hardly imagine that!”
Not that I need to point this out to you, dear reader, but there was an unmistakable undertone of bitterness rising in her voice.
“I could hardly imagine the possibility of having to sleep on the sidewalk, or stitch socks in a workhouse, or being groped by some drunken cretin in a Bowery dive.”
“What are you saying, Camille?”
“What am I saying? What sort of delusions do you have about me, Charlie? Just what do you think I am? I’m not even sure why you come around here, to be honest. Do you think that people don’t talk? Do you think they don’t wonder why a man of your sort – why a so-called gentlemen -- spends so many hours in the company of such a dubious, penniless, useless woman?”
This outburst, to describe mildly, felt not unlike what I imagined would the musket ball of a lifelong friend plunging into my back.
“Camille – you belittle yourself to the point of tragedy.”
“No, Charlie, you belittle me. To unload your financial faux pas on me – then to root around for pity from me – it flies in the face of decency.”
“I only thought that we were confidants…”
“Yeah, well confidences costs you, Charlie. They cost you. And now that you can no longer pay for them, I’d rather not exchange them.”
